Managers Who Drove Buses Will Get Extra Pay

The Orange County Transit District plans to award $15,000 in overtime pay to administrators who drove buses during last month’s drivers’ strike, even though they are considered management personnel who would normally be excluded from such pay.

The pay, expected to be approved by OCTD directors at their regular meeting Monday, would go to 15 supervisors, schedulers and analysts who drove buses during the 14-day walkout.

Each administrator involved is to receive between $105 and $1,392, calculated as straight time rather than time-and-a-half, according to OCTD spokeswoman Joanne Curran.

Juliene Smith, general chairman of Tustin-based United Transportation Union Local 19, could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but union officials last week expressed anger at the district’s plan to give a $1,500 party for employees who worked during the strike. The party was canceled after word of it leaked to the uninvited.

Smith is battling efforts by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 911 in Long Beach to replace the UTU as the bus drivers’ bargaining unit.

At meetings between the unions and OCTD officials Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 20 was selected as the date for a union representation election. On that day, Curran of the transit district said, bus drivers will be given ballots on which they may choose between the two unions.

Electioneering, which had been fierce at OCTD’s main bus yard in Garden Grove, was almost invisible Wednesday. Teamsters representatives staffed their union’s information table for a few hours and then left. The UTU stopped staffing its information table earlier this week, after Smith complained that OCTD was violating its own policy by permitting such politicking on district property and was improperly aiding the Teamsters by giving them preferred table locations.

Curran denied that OCTD was exhibiting favoritism, but he admitted that previously the district had barred union campaigning on OCTD property.

Privately, however, some OCTD officials have said recently that they hope the Teamsters will prevail in the election because they have had a good working relationship with OCTD’s mechanics, whom the Teamsters already represent.

The Teamsters refused to aid the UTU during the December strike and then announced that they were seeking to represent OCTD bus drivers.

Teamsters officials have argued that they can negotiate for improved medical benefits better than the UTU and also that UTU officials mishandled the drivers’ strike, in part by walking out just before Christmas.

The strike ended when the transit district threatened to hire “permanent” replacements and the drivers returned to work without a new contract.

Smith has confidently predicted victory for the UTU, pointing out that previous bids by the Teamsters to represent the drivers have failed.